Rainbow Order Necklace

Have you ever witnessed a child putting things "in order"?  Like lining up all the cars, placing each animal side by side or even putting same size blocks together?  They love order!  When we were learning about spring weather rainbows came up.  Of course there is an order to their color, so we got right down to it!

Here we made a map legend of the rainbow colors.  I previously cut out circles in each of the colors and had them glue them down on a piece of paper.

Then they took their map legend to another area to make a rainbow necklace.  They put the beads in color order and then made a pattern by repeating the order!  Did I mention I did this with my sweet little 3 year olds?  They did such a fantastic job. :)

Earth Day Activities

I've decided to give you a round up of some of my favorite crafts and activities for Earth Day!  Now, many people look at Earth Day on just the earth, but I look at it on a way to keep our earth healthy.  We celebrate the Earth every day in our classroom by upcycling, recycling and reusing items that would otherwise be thrown in the trash.  How do you celebrate?

Styrofoam Structures

Film Canister Penguins

Necktie Snakes

Litter/Water Pollution Experiment

Recycled Fabric Pizza

Egg Carton Train

Cardboard Tube/Bottle Cap Race Car

CD/Egg "UFO"

Newspaper Bowls

Volcano

Cardboard Tube Stamps

Cereal Box/Milk Cap Car

Fabric Bolt Canvas

Color Wheel

Magazine Earth Collage

Happy Earth Day!

It's Spring!

Some of my readers are ready to shed their winter coats and finally enjoy some sunshine, gardening and kite flying.  Here in the desert we enjoyed about 3 weeks of spring and are now inching our way to 90 degrees.  The a/c is already running in our school building!  It's not stopping me from observing the true season.  :)

 Here are a few fun "spring" time activities we've done so far this season

Recycled Flowers!

I set out bowls of different sizes of lids, caps and tops to choose from.  Children put together the flowers by order sizing.  The leaves are painted coffee slips.  

Flower Books

I cut a long piece of sturdy paper, (11x18, I think) into strips, folded accordion style and the children cut and glued pictures of flowers, plants and vegetable gardens into their book.

Flower Shop!

After a generous donation of all types of silk flowers I new I had to come up with a flower shop.  I had buckets, pails, boxes and vases filled with flowers.  After the prices were set (by the children). the cashier was ready to sell!  It was a very busy store!

911 Teamwork

I love to teach the kids all about teamwork.  Working together is something they will have to do for the rest of their lives. Teaching them this important skill at a young age will set them up for success as they get older.  School projects, work projects, relationships all need the support of a team.  This is what we do in the classroom when a spill happens, need to look for something, clean up time, a big puzzle or anything that needs the aid of our friends, we say Teamwork Needed or 911 Teamwork!  That alert tells everyone to stop what their doing and go help our teammates.  The kids even sing songs about teamwork and what their helping with.  It works like a charm! 

 

Mud is Wet and Messy!

Next week my 3 classes are having a Spring Play.  We've been practicing all sorts of cute spring type songs.  One of my favorites is about MUD!  I love, love, love mud!  Here is the song and a simple art project to go with it.

MUDDY DAYS

Tune: The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Mud is wet and messy

But fun to play in too.

I squish it through my fingers

And make a pie for you.

When it gets all sunny,

The mud will go away.

And then we’ll have to wait until

It rains again someday.

Easy Spring Kite

We are really enjoying our (short lived) spring weather right now!  It crawled into the 90's last week, but has dipped back down to the low 80's again. PHEW! 

Yesterday we made some simple kites made with a paper plate.  I really try to use what I have in the cabinets before going out to buy materials.  We had these paper plates with holes cut in the middle left over from some other project and I also have an undesirable amount of crepe paper. Quick and simple but a whole lot of fun!

T is for Transportation

Trains, Planes and Automobiles...could it get any more fun?  Sorting, matching, graphing, and of course building were ways we learned about different types of transportation.  We even got to EAT transportation!

Painting with cars!  I love how the camera caught how fast they were moving.

Cars got awfully dirty...took them to the car wash!

Map Making: I gave them graphing paper, hung a few maps around the room (for examples) and they designed their own maps. 

I found these paper roads that I had used  for a border at one time (like 12 years ago!) but decided that the kids would like them better on the floor.  They had a great time designing different road shapes.

Name Trains: Left unhinged this acts as a great game for kids to learn the order of their names. 

Air/Land/Water Sort: I found pictures on Publisher that represented each type of transportation, laminated them and made mats for the kids to sort and classify. 

Bottle Cap Sail Boats! We made these using caps, straws and foam for the sail (I hot glued for stability) and then added them to the water table.  Sail away, sail away....

These super fun hot air balloons were made over a 3 day course.  I like to use liquid starch for paper mache because it's much easier for the kids to use.  You could also use construction paper scraps, scrapbook paper, fabric, newspaper, tissue paper, etc.  

Mmmm...!

Want more transportation ideas? 

Airplanes, Trains and another sailboat

A very easy, cheap ($0) car

My Transportation Pinterest Board